Diagramming A Winner: It was featured on SportsCenter under the header “Small School Buzzer-Beaters,” but JMU coach Matt Brady didn’t see a replay of his team’s game-winning alley-oop against Delaware until Monday morning, long after his team arrived back in town after a four-hour bus ride home that was undoubtedly more pleasant because of said play (fast-forward to 2:04):

After viewing it a number of times, Brady was happy to break down the play that lifted his team into second place in the CAA. Below is his analysis:

We do have an end-of-the shot-clock lob play for whoever may be on the court – typically it’s Andre Nation – but knowing that they would have it scouted or that they could have guarded it with just one defender, out of the timeout we kind of changed that play around. We took everybody from the strong-side, the ball-side of the court – we took them out of the play. We had Rayshawn [Goins] duck in on the weakside block, the block farthest from the ball. Most importantly, we had A.J. [Davis] start inside of Andre Nation towards the baseline, and we wanted to wrap him away from the ball and back around the corner that was empty, in hopes that it would draw attention. And to be honest with you, I didn’t see the play until [assistant coach] Rob O’Driscoll showed it to me this morning. It seemed to draw a lot of attention. It worked the kids executed it well. I think the underrated part of the whole play, to be honest with you, wasn’t the design of the play or the finish or A.J.’s hard cut. Really, [it was] the pass. Until I saw it this morning – it was a fabulous pass. It was not an easy play. And it’s not something Devon [Moore] always wants to do because he’s sometimes leery of a turnover, but in that situation he’s interested and eager to make the pass. But in that situation, what a great pass.

It was Kyle Anderson guarding Andre Nation. So I don’t know if we necessarily even needed to wrap A.J., but we wanted to do that to create some confusion. And I do think when A.J. wrapped, it actually pulled Kyle Anderson from in front of Andre Nation guarding the rim. They went to switch. They went to switch and they both ended up behind. But the most interesting part of the play, and Rob showed it to me again this morning, was that immediately upon Andre Nation’s dunk, Kyle Anderson gave Devon Saddler a death stare, like, ‘You son of a gun, I can’t believe you missed that!’ They were supposed to switch, but that’s why we did what we did.

Andre Nation really had the easiest part of the play. He’s gonna get all the credit, but really, the credit should go to A.J. and Devon.

I didn’t get the chance to speak with Kyle Anderson about the miscommunication, but Saddler made it seem like it was Anderson’s fault, saying that he didn’t switch when he was supposed to. That’s for UD head coach Monte Ross to sort out. The Dukes are just happy their clutch lob worked so perfectly.

Power Rankings

This week, we spend ample time celebrating the league’s top talents, but this week’s power poll will focus on X-Factors – the players whose teams’ success hinges on their production from game to game: